Saturday, June 17, 2017

Summer of code 2017: Python

I decided to learn/use a language that I don't use for work. I picked Python, I messed around with Python a little 10 years ago or so but decided to give it another shot for 2 reasons.

1) A lot of data scientists are using python in addition to R. Python and R are built into SQL Server 2017, so I might have to support either of these language in the future.

2) My youngest son wants to get into game programming, he will turn 11 next month, he has been messing around with scratch for the past year but wants to do some actual coding this time. I thought Python with pygame would be a good start

So what is the plan?

The idea is to start on Monday June 19th and finish this by August 16, this is 8 weeks, that should be enough to get to a certain skill level

My son has the python book for absolute beginners, he can start on that. Both of us can also watch and download the exercises from Pluralsight

I have already bookmarked the following courses

I installed Visual Studio 2017 yesterday and made sure to add python as part of that install. Here is what it looks like....

I have not used Visual Studio for a long time so I have to also get familiar with this latest version

The idea is also to post several times a week with updates on how it is going, what both my son and myself learned and how it is going in general